Iga Janik /Köln
American Girl in Gropiusstadt
From a series of
performative gestures, in which I juxtapose everyday scenarios with out of place
characters, this performance took place in the Gropiusstadt shopping mall on
an ordinary Sunday afternoon. Over dressed for the occasion I went to the mall
to mill about, and in the great
American tradition to see and be seen. Drawing attention to myself as an outsider
through my behaviour and costume, I interacted with the crowd of Berliners in
their routine mall environment while a photographer documented the event.
Much of my creative research is about public personas. Faced with the public we all become conscious of how we project ourselves to others. Judged by our clothing and behaviour we either belong or not among those that surround us.
The title of the piece, American Girl in Gropiusstadt, refers
to a small tradition in Hollywood’s fashion photography, which engages
the notion of the foreigner as a dramatic tool, and which I mimic here to speak
of the character as a cultural stereotype created by the image industry itself.